Purpose and scope of influence
On this page, learn why it's important to set out the purpose and scope of your lived experience work early. And download our resources to help you decide the scope.
Tips for defining the purpose of your lived experience work
Before asking people to take part, you should collect as much information as you can about why and how their involvement might bring change.
Spend time thinking about this, and be clear about:
- What impact their involvement will have
- What you want to ask people
- How this will influence your work
For example, are you:
- Seeking new ideas?
- Consulting about how something currently works?
- Asking people to make decisions or co-produce as equal partners?
- Allowing scope for people with lived experience to lead this work?
Tips for defining the scope of your lived experience work
Be honest about what is and isn’t within their scope of influence. Tell people up front that you may not be able to take on board all their ideas.
If you’re asking people to join a one-off focus group or discussion event, a group agreement lets everyone know where they stand and helps to create a safe space for openness and honesty.
If you’re setting up a regular forum, make sure you have some terms of reference in place so that expectations are clear.
Tools
Annual influence and participation planning
This tool can help you identify how people will take part in each stage of your work and ensure people can meaningfully influence your work at the earliest opportunity and beyond.
Creating a group agreement
If you're asking people to join a one-off focus group or discussion event, a group agreement lets everyone know where they stand and helps to create a safe space for openness and honesty. If you're setting up a regular forum, make sure you have some terms of reference in place so that expectations are clear.
Defining and refining
You can use this tool to quickly and robustly focus your team around the priority questions and methods that you will take into your influencing activity.
Thinking about your timeline
Use this tool to situate your influence and participation activities into the bigger picture of your work. This will help you run meaningful initiatives that have the maximum level of impact.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
